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The Rochester Conferences on Coherence and Quantum Optics and the Quantum Information and Measurement meeting

Micro-macro entanglement

Christoph Simon

Published Jan 1, 2013• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Does quantum physics apply on all scales? I describe recent theoretical and experimental work on the creation and detection of micro-macro entanglement involving single photons and intense light beams.
DOI
10.1364/qim.2013.th2b.1

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Macro-micro entanglement originates from the Schrodinger's Cat paradox. The paradox has been attracting the interest of the physicists since it was proposed. Schrodinger's Cat paradox is a thought experiment that entangles a cat with some decay atoms, in which the entanglement between the macroscopic object and the microscopic atoms is established. Mac-micro entanglement relates to some important problems in quantum physics. It is more likely to interact with the surroundings for the quantum system as its size increases, which is the reason why we hardly observe the macroscopic superposition state. Can the superposition state theory of quantum physics be used in macro domain? Is there a limitation to the scale for the objects in the superposition states? These questions need studying and verifying in experiment. In addition, the preparation of the macro-micro entanglement state provides a new possibility to study the decoherence model. Macro-micro entanglement can be realized in many physical systems, such as atomic ensembles, superconducting circuits, electro-mechanical and opto-mechanical systems. Here in this paper we will introduce the development of macro-micro entanglement in optical system. The initial approach to creating the macro-micro entanglement in the context of optical system is quantum cloning by simulating the emission. Then the quantum-injected optical parametric amplification is used to amplify single photon to a macroscopic level. Afterwards, the displacement in phase space is proposed to create the macro-micro entanglement. Since the photon number of the macro-micro entanglement with the optical parametric amplification approach can be about 104, the studies towards the detection of this type of entanglement with human eyes have been extensively conducted. But it is realized that the coarse-grained measurements, such as those with the human eye, generally cannot judge whether macro-micro entanglement exists, and hence cannot be used to prove the considered type of micro-macro entanglement. A way of overcoming this difficulty is to invert the amplification process, bringing the macro system back to the micro level. The entanglement can then be verified by using single-photon detectors. Because local operation and classical communication cannot create entanglement, the de-amplification process will not increase the entanglement and the presence of the entanglement in the end shows that entanglement is present between the amplification and de-amplification process. Inspired by this thought, two groups create and verify mac-micro entanglement between one photon and 108 photons. What they used to amplify the micro states is the displacement operation in phase space, which can be realized by combining a single photon state and a coherent state with a highly asymmetric beam splitter. Because the entanglement is a precondition for a secure quantum key distribution, and the macro-micro entanglement has more photons than the traditional micro entanglement, we will discuss the possibility whether the macro-micro entanglement can be used in quantum key distribution and improve the distance of the quantum key distribution. We point out that the mac-micro entanglement and the binary reverse reconciliation continuous variable quantum key distribution protocol are the same in physics essence. We will introduce a quantum key distribution scheme with two phase entangled coherent states. Although the security proof of the scheme is not complete, it still provides us with the possibility to use the macro-micro entanglement in quantum key distribution.
Quantum mechanics predicts microscopic phenomena with undeniable success. Nevertheless, current theoretical and experimental efforts still do not yield conclusive evidence that there is or is not a fundamental limitation on the possibility to observe quantum phenomena at the macroscopic scale. This question prompted several experimental efforts producing quantum superpositions of large quantum states in light or matter. We report on the observation of quantum correlations, revealed using an entanglement witness, between a single photon and an atomic ensemble of billions of ions frozen in a crystal. The matter part of the state involves the superposition of two macroscopically distinguishable solid-state components composed of several tens of atomic excitations. Assuming the insignificance of the time ordering our experiment indirectly shows light-matter micro-macro entanglement. Our approach leverages from quantum memory techniques and could be used in other systems to expand the size of quantum superpositions in matter.